LOS ANGELES — Valerie Harper, best-known for playing Rhoda Morgenstern on the 1970s sitcoms
The Mary Tyler Moore Show and
Rhoda, has revealed she has terminal brain cancer.

The actress, who also starred for two years on the ’80s sitcom
Valerie, told
People magazine: “I don’t think of dying. I think of being here now.”

Tests have determined that Harper, 73, has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a condition that
occurs when cancer spreads to the fluid surrounding the brain. According to the magazine, her
doctors say she might have just three months to live.

The bout with cancer isn’t her first: She received a diagnosis of lung cancer in 2009. Despite
being a lifelong nonsmoker, she developed a tumor on her top right lobe.

After surgery successfully removed the tumor, she spoke to Yahoo Health about her status as a
cancer survivor, saying: “I’m of the thinking that we’re all terminal; no one is getting out of
this alive. So you shouldn’t start sitting shiva before it’s time. Live the best life you can. Be
as healthy as possible.”

The actress has worked steadily since the height of her fame in the ’70s.

She most recently appeared on
Desperate Housewives and voiced a character on an episode of
The Simpsons that aired in January.

Her role as Rhoda Morgenstern, the brash best friend of Mary Richards (Moore), earned her four
Emmy awards and inspired a spinoff, which ran from 1974 to ’78.

Valerie was also a success, but a dispute with producers over her salary led to the
actress getting fired after two seasons.

Harper sued NBC and Lorimar Television for breach of contract in 1988 and won

$1.4 million in damages and 12.5 percent of the show’s profits.

In the 2001 Broadway comedy
The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, Harper played what she described as “an angst-ridden
woman of a certain age.”

In 2010, she was back on Broadway playing Tallulah Bankhead, a flamboyant star from the golden
age of Hollywood.

In January, Harper published the memoir
I, Rhoda, which she had been promoting when she got word about her illness.